Just hours after two New Orleans police officers in the summer of 2005 dropped off a comatose man at Charity Hospital, a medical staffer called and requested that they return to the hospital because the man was found to have been severely beaten, according to police dispatch records.

View full sizeEliot Kamenitz, Times-Picayune archiveLashonda Saulsberry and her grandmother Marie Robair hold a picture of Raymond Robair, who they say was beaten to death by NOPD. Raymond Robair was Lashonda's father and Marie's son.

But when a police dispatcher broadcast the request, the officers who brought Raymond Robair to the hospital never responded, according to testimony Wednesday morning in the federal civil rights trial of the two New Orleans police officers.

Federal prosecutors allege that officer Melvin Williams fatally beat Robair, 48, on a Treme street corner in July 2005. They also allege that officer Dean Moore, who was just weeks out of the police academy at the time, helped cover up the matter by writing a bogus report. Williams faces a federal civil-rights charge in the beating. He and Moore each face an obstruction charge for allegedly writing a false report. Moore also is charged with lying to the FBI.

Records show that Unit 934 -- the cruiser Williams and Moore rode in -- initially radioed in a "miscellaneous incident" report at the corner of Dumaine and North Robertston streets on July 30, 2005. Within about a minute, the officers told the dispatcher to re-classify the incident as a report of an intoxicated person.

Police dispatcher Elmare Thomas, who took the initial call, testified for the government and explained the dispatch documents, which provide a timeline of events that morning.

Prosecutors also played an audio snippet of a radio call in which an officer -- though it was unclear whether it's Moore or Williams -- tells the dispatcher to mark them down as being at Dumaine and North Robertson streets. The moans of a man could be heard clearly in the background.

The reports also reflect that a hospital employee called police about two hours after Robair was delivered to the hospital. The employee indicated that Robair, who was brought in by police as a possible overdose case, was found to have been "severely beaten" and in the operating room in critical condition. The caller indicated that the hospital needed the officers to return and that case might end up being a homicide.

Shortly after Thomas' testimony, the court proceedings broke for lunch. Testimony has resumed.

Earlier, a 43-year-old man begrudgingly took the witness stand to tell jurors he saw Williams beat and kick Robair.

Karl Hughes, a felon with a lengthy record of drug arrests, is currently in a work-release program in Terrebonne Parish, serving out a drug sentence.

Hughes, in a low mumble cloaked in a thick 6th Ward accent, made his intentions clear just moments into his testimony.

"I don't want to be here," he said. "Being a police case, I don't really want to testify."

Hughes, a military veteran who served in the Gulf War, said he is scared of the police and fearful for his family's safety.

"I know how things go in New Orleans," he said. "I don't need to be constantly harassed or put nothing on me."

Hughes stated that he saw Williams after Robair's death at a credit union, where the veteran officer "went off on me" and made statements Hughes considered intimidating.

Under questioning from defense attorneys, Hughes grew hostile and the back-and-forth became contentious.

Attorney Frank DeSalvo ticked off Hughes' previous arrests and convictions and asked him about each one.

"Whatever drugs I was on that day, I don't remember," Hughes said at one point. "But I do remember 'Flat-Top' hitting that man," a reference to Williams' nickname.

Attorney Eric Hessler pressed Hughes on statements he made to the FBI in 2008 that appeared to conflict with his current testimony. When asked if remembered telling an FBI agent that he saw officers pick Robair up and put him in a police car, Hughes grew angry.